Saturday, October 03, 2009

Elder Care

My mother, who passed away in June, was a member of the nomadic tribe of unfortunate people who spend their last days on earth being bounced around assisted living facilities. She spent the last few years moving from one place to another and hating them all. We hated them too. Except for the last one, which was great. But by then it was too late.

My friend Ben Wah recently found it necessary to put his mother in an assisted living place, a fancy one by assisted living standards. Respectable.

But he told me a story the other evening. Seems his mother had a large chunk of money stolen from her whilst in her residence. Well, Ben and his brothers were a little pissed about this. So they placed a camera in his mother's room, and as Ben put it: "We caught the bitch!" The Bitch being one of the in-house staff. On film. With Mrs. Wah's $. Interestingly, the same "helper" worked for a time at one of the places my mother was living.

So, if you have a relative in elder care, advocate hugely for your loved one, be a high profile visitor that asks questions, makes yourself known, wants to see the med log and taste the food. And believe everything your loved one says, even if you don't believe it.